


Crest

by tymbal



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters: Ruby & Sapphire & Emerald | Pokemon Ruby Sapphire Emerald Versions
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-05
Updated: 2015-01-05
Packaged: 2018-03-05 11:43:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3118892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tymbal/pseuds/tymbal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>ORAS-based, Brawly/Roxanne.  Roxanne learns to relax in Dewford Town</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crest

The depths of Granite Cave were cool and vaguely moist—Roxanne kept imagining that she was inside the cute wet nose of a Skitty or Poochyena. But no, Granite Cave was far grander than that. The deep red paintings of thousands of years ago gazed down from the walls, rudimentary yet strangely beautiful depictions of Pokemon, towns by the sea, and the silhouettes of early humans. Roxanne had long studied such paintings in textbook after textbook, she even recognized some of them here, but this was her first time seeing the glistening quality of the cave walls, the depth of the paint’s fading colors. This was her first time leaving Rustboro City at all, and every part of her was bristling with excitement and thankfulness that she’d been awarded the scholarship to participate on this dig.

A real archaeological dig in Granite Cave! It was her first time doing fieldwork, and she was determined to be skilled from the very beginning, the same way she was skilled at everything she set her mind to. She studied beforehand. She bought her own trowel. She dressed stylishly but appropriately, in khaki pants with a pointedly pretty blouse and her dark hair piled atop her head in a functional compilation of pink bows. She was determined to wow her teachers, to prove she wasn’t just a straight-A student in the classroom, but also a straight-A student in the field.

Oh how she wanted to impress her supervisor! Which left her somewhat disappointed when, even when she showed off her shiny new trowel and named some of the paintings on the walls, she was relegated to the same menial tasks as all the other students. Didn’t the supervisor know who she was? She was a Gym-leader! She was the top of her class in Rustboro! But apparently that meant nothing here. Soon she was on her knees, digging at the cave floor with everyone else. Her pretty blouse was immediately covered in dirt. There was unsightly dirt under her fingernails and she wished she had some black nail polish to cover it up. Field work was not at all what she had expected.

The only plus side was that they were allowed to have their Pokemon help them. As Roxanne gently brushed the cave floor with her trowel, looking for bones and signs of ancient life, her Geodude did the same with his large, stone hands. Gentle, slow, menial work.

Finally she sighed and straightened, her back hurting from all the bending over, and wiped the sweat from her brow with the side of her arm (her hands were too messy, and stinging from holding the trowel to boot).

“Would anyone like some water?” she asked, offering her water bottle to her fellow students less because she actually cared whether they were thirsty and more to show off that she had thought to bring water.

Nobody looked up from their work. They were so engrossed in finding something. Roxanne huffed and drank. She pitied them. Everyone should know that she would be the one to find the first artifact. She had carefully decided on the exact right place to dig—near a circle of orange in the dirt which surely meant a hearth—and she was using her trowel in precisely the right way, and…

“Hey, I think I found something!”

Roxanne’s head snapped up at the voice. A young man with blue hair was sitting cross-legged in the dirt, grinning from ear to ear. He proceeded to hack at the cave floor completely inexpertly, scooping up an object from the dirt.

Roxanne stormed over to him.

“What are you doing?” she demanded. “You’re supposed to keep it in situ and note exactly where you found it before you excavate it.” How had this imbecile found something before her?

He grinned up at her, and the Makuhita beside him also grinned up at her. It was like they had the same face.

“I think it’s a bone!” he exclaimed, picking it up between his dirty fingers and completely ignoring her advice.

A murmur went through the other students, and everyone dropped what they were doing to come look at the object he found. Sure enough, it was a bone, still white and fragile underneath a layer of grime. It was a good find. Usually bones were found in tiny fragments, not in one big chunk. Roxanne puffed out her cheeks in annoyance, but nobody noticed.

“Dude, that’s awesome!” One student said, brushing the bone with one finger reverently.

“I know right?” said the blue-haired excavator. “Me n’ Makuhita sure lucked out.”

“Yes, dumb luck,” said Roxanne. “You need to be more careful. Skill finds more than luck any day…”

But nobody was listening to her, they were all engrossed in the bone.

Scratch that. The blue-haired boy was listening to her, but he was doing so with this blank smile on his face like he didn’t really care what she was talking about.

“Who are you?” she asked, realizing she didn’t recognize him. “Are you even in this class?”

“Nope!” he said proudly. “I’m just volunteerin’. I’m from Dewford, so I volunteer at digs here every year. I just like getting muddy!”

“Maku-hi!” said the Makuhita, as if in agreement.

“Do you even know what time period we’re looking for?” Roxanne demanded.

The blue-haired boy laughed. “Naw, I don’t know anything. I’m just good at digging shit up.”

“This is not ‘shit’!”

“Well actually, paleo-feces can provide a wealth of information…” A random student in glasses pointed out.

“I knew that!” Roxanne was very close to stomping her foot and waving her arms in frustration. As is, her face was already beet red.

“Say,” said the student in glasses, turning to the blue-haired boy. “You look familiar, though. Have I seen you on tv?”

“Yep!” the blue-haired boy chirped. “I’m Gym Leader here in Dewford.”

The other students were now even more impressed, except for Roxanne who was utterly gobsmacked. This baffoon was a Gym Leader?

But. She was a Gym Leader! Why wasn’t anyone impressed with her? Why were they all fawning over this idiot?

She opened her mouth to say something quite mean, but that was when their supervisor arrived. He looked over them, noting the conglomeration around the blue-haired boy, and approached with a smile.

“Did you find something again, Brawly? You’re my lucky charm on these digs, I swear,” the supervisor said, taking the bone from Brawly and smiling at him like an old friend. “Ah, this is a human bone alright. They’re gonna love this at the lab.”

Roxanne squeezed her lips shut, her Geodude floating at her side with concern. This was the exact moment when Roxanne decided that Brawly was her number one enemy. As he grinned back at the supervisor with his stupid grin and ruffled his own stupid blue hair. 

Roxanne hated him completely.

 

She hated him so completely, in fact, that after the day’s work and a hot shower, she didn’t rest the way her aching muscles were begging for, but instead marched her way over to Dewford’s gym, which wasn’t too far from the bed-and-breakfast she was staying at anyway.

When she entered the gym, it was completely dark. What sort of gym was this? Couldn’t they afford some simple lighting?

Finally, she stamped her foot and shouted “Brawly!”

A woman in a jumpsuit emerged from the shadows and flicked on a nearby light, illuminating only a small part of the gym. She had a Pokeball at the ready and a big smirk.

“To challenge our leader Brawly, you’ll first have to get through me,” the woman said. “I choose you, Medit—”

“NOPE,” said Roxanne, shoving past her.

“Um. Wait. What?” said the woman, but Roxanne was already storming on by, walking out of the circle of light and into the greater darkness of the gym. She stormed on blindly, her hands out in front of her.

“Brawly, where are you?” she demanded. “I am Roxanne of the Rustboro City Gym and I demand that you—”

She tripped over something and screamed, falling to the floor in a cacophony of falling objects and clutter. After a short silence, all of the lights turned on, revealing Roxanne in a heap on the floor, her foot throbbing where she’d tripped over a large dumbbell. She was surrounded by medicine balls and a box of toppled pedometers and treadmills and other exercise equipment. It was like a literal gym in here, and it smelled like sweat and had none of the pomp and circumstance a Pokemon gym was supposed to have.

She was absolutely furious, so furious that she barely even noticed that a couple of people were helping her to her feet, a pair of hands under each of her elbows. One was the woman from earlier. The other helper was Brawly himself.

“Sorry!” he said, annoyingly jovial. “Are you here to see me? I thought you were a challenger. We keep the lights off for training purposes.” He grinned as if this made any sense whatsoever. “What was your name again?”

Roxanne glowered at him, brushing off her skirts. “I’m Roxanne of the Rustboro City Gym,” she announced again. “And you should know that, Brawly of Dewford, if you’re a self-respecting Hoenn Gym Leader.” Of course, she hadn’t recognized Brawly either earlier in the day, but that was hardly worth mentioning…

“So you are challenging me?” Brawly asked, confused. “Cus I saw your Geodude and my Fighting-Types would cream Rock-Types, just saying.”

“They would not!” Roxanne stamped her foot. “And that’s not why I’m here.”

“Then why are you here, ma’am?” asked the jumpsuit woman, looking thoroughly weary despite Brawly’s clueless good cheer. At least someone here knew how to interpret a displeased visitor.

“I want to know who you think you are volunteering at the Granite Cave excavation,” Roxanne said, jabbing an accusatory finger into Brawly’s chest. It was quite a hard, well-muscled chest. She blushed and immediately took her hand away, instead putting her hands on her hips. Boys were not her strongsuit.

Brawly shrugged. “It’s fun, I guess.”

“It’s not fun, it’s important. We’re researching some of the earliest known humans in there. We might even find clues to when humans and Pokemon first started working together!”

Brawly raised his blue eyebrows. “So that’s what it is, huh?”

“I’m saying you have no purpose there if you can’t appreciate anything. And furthermore—!” But Roxanne’s words died in her throat. Brawly watched her expectantly, but to Roxanne’s great embarrassment she found that she had nothing else to say. She started turning red again.

“Prehistoric Pokemon, huh?” said Brawly, stroking his chin with a fingerless-gloved hand. “That’s pretty rad.”

Roxanne raised her chin proudly and said, with great dignity “Yes. It is rad.”

“Maybe I’ll start reading some more about it before digging again tomorrow. That way I’ll be able to find even more stuff!”

That’s not what Roxanne had wanted at all. “Why don’t you just stay away?” she insisted. “There’s no reason to be there if you’re not really interested…”

“Oh I’m interested! You couldn’t keep me away now!”

Why was this such a nightmare? Roxanne tried to think of the right words to convince him otherwise, but then the jumpsuit woman was laying a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask you to leave,” the woman said politely. “You caused a lot of damage and we kind of have to clean up before any challengers arrive.”

Roxanne looked at the chaos around her and the true mortification of her situation settled in. She covered her red face in her hands as the jumpsuit woman led her out the door.

Brawly, meanwhile, was still stroking his chin. “Pretty rad,” he said again.

 

During the dig the next day, Roxanne was determined to avoid Brawly and her unappreciative classmates as much as possible. She hunched over her hearth with her back to them, doing her work slowly and methodically with Geodude—her one true friend—at her side. It was even starting to be a little fun, but then Brawly completely ruined it by coming over and plopping next to her, folding his legs underneath him.

“Hey,” he said with a grin.

She ignored him very acutely.

“Heyyy,” he said again, leaning in front of her face. “I wanted to ask you something.”

“What?” she snapped.

“I want you to tell me about this shit we’re digging up.”

“It’s not—” she sighed. “Fine. What do you want to know?”

“Everything,” said Brawly.

She rolled her eyes. But information was her strongsuit, so she began to tell him everything.

She told him about paleoanthropology and paleoPokeology, and about how everything from the color of the dirt to the positioning of tiny fragments of pottery could tell you something about an archaeological site. She told him how these cave paintings were some of the earliest cave paintings including both humans and Pokemon to date, and her own personal hopes that this cave might hold the answers to when humans and Pokemon first began their long friendship in the Hoenn region. She told him how to categorize these paintings, and how miraculously well-preserved they were, and how this dig was hoping to learn more about the people who made them etc and so forth and everything else.

“Hmm. I think I get it now,” Brawly said, stroking his chin like he had back at his Gym.

“About the period we’re looking for?” asked Roxanne tiredly.

“Naw, that still confuses me like crazy. I meant you. You seem really mean and stuck-up, but actually you’re just excited.”

Roxanne flushed. Why did this idiot have to always make her turn red? “I beg your pardon?”

“You’re a little bit cute. Hey, wanna go to the beach after this?”

The beach? What on earth? What were they going to do at the beach? There was nothing to excavate there…

But just to be stubborn, she found herself nodding yes. She would go to the beach. She would overcome whatever Brawly had planned for her. It was about time she managed to humiliate him as much as he humiliated her!

But Brawly just smiled, big and loopy as a Makuhita, and went back to the hack-job he called digging.

 

After two days of excavating, Roxanne was thoroughly fatigued, so much so that her knees and elbows had swollen and weren’t bending quite right, to say nothing of the blisters already forming on her hands. She was the sort of girl who lived among books and tea rather than any form of athleticism, so the work had taken its toll. But even more than a warm bed, she wanted to feel clean, like she could cleanse herself of that permanent-seeming grime under her nails, and for that reason a swim in the ocean wasn’t an altogether unpleasant prospect.

She had packed a swimsuit at a classmate’s eager suggestion, but hadn’t intended to utilize it until today. Now she sat awkwardly in the sands of Dewford Town’s beach wearing only the swimsuit and a pink sarong around her waist. She was feeling self-conscious because this was the very first two-piece swimsuit she had ever owned, and as a bookish-not-athletic type girl she had a little bit of pudge at her waist which he wished she didn’t have. She wished even harder when Brawly appeared in his swimsuit.

Brawly was fricken ripped.

His muscles were absurd for his age—he couldn’t be much older than her right?—and his hard chest cut into a set of abs that weren’t at all bad to look at. He had a stupid tanline at his arms and neck, like he was used to wearing a wetsuit instead, but that somehow made him look even better. Roxanne quietly fumed because honestly. How dare he.

“You’re puffing out your cheeks again and I haven’t even said anything!” Brawly said cheerfully. “Oh wait, it’s because I’m late. Sorry I’m late!”

He offered her a hand, but she didn’t accept it. She liked her personal space, thanks. She did not like touching half-naked guys if she could help it, particularly when they were somewhat attractive. My, this was getting messier by the minute.

“Where are we going?” she asked once she was standing, tying the knot of her sarong a little tighter.

“To the water, duh,” said Brawly. “Can’t go to the beach without swimming.”

Roxanne worried her bottom lip, not wanting to get rid of the sarong (her thighs were larger than she’d like as well), but the invitation of that water was too tempting. She let the cloth fall to the ground, her toes pointing inward and curling into the sand.

“It better not be cold,” she said.

It was cold, but not so bad once you got used to it. Brawly dove right in and started swimming away in a vigorous crawl, and that was great in Roxanne’s opinion. She hoped he just kept on swimming until he disappeared on the horizon. In the meantime, she slowly got used to the water, tiptoeing deeper and deeper, until she was so deep that she had to struggle to keep her head up when a large wave rolled by. Her hair was in its usual twin pigtails now (pink bows of course), and stuck wetly to her back.

Unfortunately, Brawly did return, panting with exertion and grinning.

“You surf at all?” he asked.

“I don’t have a surfboard,” she said slowly, as if talking to a stupid person, which surely she was.

“You don’t need a surfboard to surf! Here watch.” He looked behind them at the approaching waves, still smiling (did he ever stop smiling?). “Here comes a good one. You ready?”

Ready for what? But before she could ask anything the wave was upon them, and Brawly was suddenly swimming forward toward the shore, swimming until he was perfectly positioned in front of the wave and then he stopped and held his arms out like wings. The water carried him the rest of the way, his body riding the crest of the wave until he wound up belly-down on the shore, shouting out a very boyish “whoop!”

He cupped his hands around his mouth and called to her: “Did you see that? You try now!”

She waited for him to come back into the water, but he didn’t. He was standing on the shore, legs wide apart, hands on his hips, beaming, waiting for her to surf to him.

Timidly, she watched the approaching waves. What exactly made a good wave? He hadn’t explained that part. And how would she know to get on the exact right part of it? She needed a point of reference, to study beforehand…

She glared at him over her shoulder, but he was still waiting.

‘An awful anxiety was gnawing at her stomach, but overriding that was the desire to one-up Brawly. That was what drove her. She was out to always, always, prove she was the best.

So she took a deep breath, chose a wave, and started swimming.

But the wave was faster than her and she only bobbed on top of it as it swept on by.

“That’s ok!” Brawly called. “Try again!”

And she did. Two more times until she turned to the oncoming waves and saw the largest wave she had ever seen in her life. Out in the endless expanse of the ocean, it was already tipped white with curling foam.

“Oh that one’s gnarly!” came Brawly’s voice. “Better let it pass…”

Which meant she absolutely had to take it. Furrowing her brow in determination, the same way she frowned over tests and textbooks, she turned around and started swimming into the wave. It was fast, she had to pump her arms and legs until they felt like they were on fire from the combined efforts of excavation and swimming, but she just kept on pushing further until—

She was flying. She threw her arms out like wings, the same way Brawly had, and she was flying on top of this huge wave, the whole of the ocean working beneath her. Brawly was shouting excitedly on the beach, looking stunned. She found herself shouting as well, without really meaning to, suddenly swept up in the power and grace of this moment.

Then the wave curled a bit too much. Her body turned until it was pointing downward.

The wave drove her facefirst into the sand.

She coughed and choked on water and sand, and was scrabbling at the shore when strong hands grabbed under her elbows for the second time and hauled her out of the water.

“That was awesome!” Brawly crowed, kneeling beside her. “That was the best ride I’ve ever seen!”

Ugh, she had sand in her hair. It was under her fingernails, added with the dirt from the excavation. A part of her wanted to cry.

But then Brawly was helping her to her feet, and she remembered just how proud he had been when she was on top of that wave, that moment when they were both cheering as one.

“I liked it,” she said, so quietly that Brawly almost missed it. He was already heading back out into the water.

“You wanna try again?” he asked.

She looked at him, chin held high, and nodded curtly.

It was the most fun she’d had in a long, long time.

 

They surfed until evening, at which point the last stragglers of the beach were leaving for home (Dewford was a town that went to bed early), leaving the two of them nearly alone in their sport. Finally, it became too dark for them to see the waves well enough to surf them, and they swam back to shore. Only on dry land did Roxanne begin to realize just how tired she was. Her arms felt like lead, her legs like jelly, and her eyes were itchy with sleepiness. This physical activity business was really draining.

But instead of starting home, Brawly sat in the sand, arms wrapping around his legs, and gazed up at the stars. As if acquiescing to a challenge, Roxanne sat beside him.

There were so many stars, far more than above Rustboro. It was hard to believe they were the same ones.

“Is this what you do every day?” she asked.

He shrugged, perching his chin on his knees. “I train every day,” he said. “The rest is just whatever’s the most fun.”

“And I’m the most fun?” she asked skeptically.

He laughed and said “Yeah!”

She frowned at her toes, pale and stubby in the sand. “Well, I think you’re incorrigible,” she said.

“Hah! I don’t know what that means.”

“But,” she continued. “I’m sorry I was rude to you.”

He didn’t respond, just shrugging again, and the sound of the waves hitting the shore filled the silence. The little rivulets of water that crept up the beach nearly found their toes, but not quite.

“I just don’t like people being better than me,” she mumbled, a little petulantly.

“Who’s better than you?” he asked, tilting his head sideways to look at her.

“You! You find artifacts better than me, and you don’t even know what they are. I’m supposed to be the best, is the thing.”

“And you aren’t?”

“Well… Not at everything.”

“Sounds stressful. Being the best at everything.”

She waved her hands, frustrated suddenly that she couldn’t find the right words to explain herself. “My mom is the same way,” she said. “I was raised by my mom. Just my mom. She’s a businesswoman and she had to work really hard to get there, you know? She was working back when hardly any women were in her position. She had to work extra hard just to prove she was worthy. So I work extra hard to prove I’m worthy of being her daughter. It’s not like I’m being unreasonable or unrealistic. I know my boundaries, what I’m capable and not capable of. It’s just that whenever I see a challenge, I always think to myself ‘I know I could be the best one here if I gave it my all.’ So I give it my all, and I am the best.”

She started plucking at her feet, brushing the sand off idly. “Usually it goes faster than this, is all,” she said. “And I guess I was mad ‘cus it seemed like you put in no effort, but you were still better than me.”

Brawly laughed.

She stared at him, hurt, and his laugh died abruptly.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m glad you told me this. It’s just. I’m not better than you? This whole time I’ve been thinking how interesting you are. All the stuff you know, and how hard you work. Man, I try to work really hard with my training, but that’s no match for what you’re up against in your own head.”

She wasn’t exactly sure whether to be flattered or offended by this, but then he flashed her this big, radiant smile, and she found her response dying in her throat. Her face grew hot once again and she had to look away, blushing there in the dark. Her heart was beating very fast.

It wasn’t often someone actually complimented her like that, told her that she was doing a good job at being herself.

“I like you,” he said. “How long are you going to be in Dewford?”

“About a week,” she said. “I might come back next summer as well, I don’t know…”

“Let’s be friends.” He suddenly got to his feet, not even bothering to brush the sand off of his butt. He smiled down at her, until she stood as well.

She held out a hand tentatively, and he accepted it for a handshake. His hand was warm and big. Yes. Let’s be friends.

“I like you too,” she said, and was a little startled by how utterly true the words were.

His grin grew almost too big for his face, and then he turned and started the trek back into town. She got an awkwardly good look at the muscles of his back, awash in moon and starlight, and found herself glancing at his sandy bum. It was a nice bum. She was a little angry at him again because how dare he have such a nice bum.

But she also hurried up to walk with him side by side.


End file.
